Company of Heroes Single Player Hands-on

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We finally get the chance to see Relic's next heroic RTS.

By Dan Adams

The reaction to Relic's announcement of Company of Heroes was interesting. Hooray that they're making another game! Booo that it's set in World War II! I guess it's easy to pick on the setting at this point regardless of how terrifically suitable it is for strategy gaming. There are just a ton of World War II RTSs out there at this point. Heck, we can pop off at least 24 since 2000 with others surely lurking in the dark corridors of memory's disinterest. But there's undoubtedly something special about Relic's Company of Heroes and after playing the multiplayer before and at this year's E3, we became believers. Having finally had the chance to roll through a few levels of the single player campaign, we're pretty confident that this will be a game many real-time strategy fans will enjoy. If you haven't ever seen the game in action, we highly recommend checking out our new HD video preview which has a bunch of explosive footage!

The single player campaign is set during the initial invasion of Normandy (from the US perspective) and the recapture of many of the important French cities. This includes everything from Able Company's attack on the beaches, Fox Company's drop behind enemy lines to destroy AA guns and capture Carenten, the recapture of Cherbourg, and the cornering of Germany's 7th Division at Chambois by the US, Polish and Canadian forces.

The 15 missions come complete with some of the animatic cutscenes that will be very familiar to fans of Homeworld along with in-game cutscenes and mission briefings using the in-game map to show off where points of contention will be and give brief hints on possible strategies (that may become moot when German reinforcements roll in). Cutscene briefings are presented well and bring an air of authenticity while in-game cutscenes provide a bit of a dramatic cinematic feel to build tension and present gameplay.

Missions are fairly varied in mission types and are full of action from the first second on. While some of the missions are more traditional "Build a base and go out and kick some ass" types of scenarios, others will stick players immediately in ambushes, throw timed objectives in to push the pace, or even defend against massive German counterattacks.

Company of Heroes is a traditional RTS in that commanders will be responsible for the construction of bases and management of resources. How the resources are gathered is where the game differs a bit. The basics of resource gathering are actually very similar to Relic's Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War RTS released a couple of years ago. Players have to capture points set up around the map which then automatically add resources over time. Radar posts can be built on top of these capture points for an increased boost in resources as well.

Unlike Dawn of War which has two basic resources (one of which is generated by buildings) there are three resources in Company of Heroes (manpower, munitions, and fuel) which have their own capture points. Manpower is the most important as it's used in every unit created. Munitions is important for special attacks like grenades and rocket barrages as well as weapons upgrades. Fuel is necessary to construct most buildings and create any vehicles.

At the beginning of each scenario in the campaign, players will have to check out the map to see where the capture points sit and rush infantry out to capture them. Holding every point on the map can be pretty difficult as the population cap isn't extraordinarily high, but keeping a supply chain intact is a very important prospect. In order actually receive the supplies from one of the resource points, the territory the supplies are in have to be directly connected through other captured territories to the player headquarters. Capturing strategic road zones, for instance, can cut off entire zones of control from the home base, effectively eliminating resources. This means that it's very important to spend some resources defending strategic points as well as resource points.